The Art of Wafflemaking
by ongreenergrasses
Summary: It's not rocket science. At least, it's not supposed to be.


**Okay, I owe everyone a fluff. BIG time. This is my apology for Chapter Two of Us Through Our Objects - at last count I had made eight people cry. So view this as an apology for that...and for Chapter Three :/  
>This story is inspired by an experience of one of my very close friends, Emily. She went to All-State two weeks ago and was rudely awoken at an ungodly hour by a fire alarm, which had been set off by a burnt waffle. Let us just say she was not pleased XD<br>Written to "Smoothie Song" by Nickel Creek.  
>Disclaimer: I do own one of those terrible waffle makers. But I don't own Sherlock, John, 221B, or the screwdriver.<br>Warnings: None. You might squeal at the end (at least, I hope so) but other than that just read at your pleasure. **

The fire alarm woke John Watson from a very deep sleep at approximately 4:23 AM.

You can ask any of John's friends, or his sister, and they will tell you that once John is asleep, nothing short of a hurricane will wake him up. The man goes out like a rock that has been hit on the head and wakes up when he has exactly an hour to get ready for work, and only then. Before he moved into 221B Baker Street, he got at least 8 hours of sleep every night and would be embarrassingly late to work if he had to be. After his entry into the life of Sherlock Holmes, sleep became increasingly hard to come by and when he did get any, it was for very short increments of time.

But his disrupted sleep schedule did absolutely nothing to lighten the stupor into which John sank into at every possible opportunity. You could run a tank through Speedy's Sandwich Bar and Café and the man would stretch, yawn, and fall asleep again in a matter of seconds. The roof of his bedroom could blow off and John would maybe twitch. So really, a fire alarm wasn't even close to a disruption.

John Watson rolled over, smacked the snooze button on his alarm clock, buried his head under his pillow, and was asleep again in a matter of seconds despite the continued blaring of the fire alarm.

...

Sherlock swore. Loudly.

The object on the receiving end of this profanity was a newly purchased waffle maker. This was a terrible waffle maker, incidentally – one of those very cheap models that are assembled by the dozens in Sri Lankan sweatshops and have instructions that are originally written in Bengali and then translated to English very badly. Sherlock had never made waffles in his life, let alone purchased a waffle maker, and the lack of instructions wasn't helping the process.

First of all, the waffle batter had most definitely not been the right consistency – its similarity to unnamed bodily fluids could not be good – and no matter what Sherlock did, the condition of the waffle mix worsened. He had eventually given up and just poured some of the mixture on the hot waffle iron. The mixture had been very opposed to the idea of going on the waffle iron, however: the batter had somehow come alive and spread rather rapidly all over the iron, spilling off over the sides before Sherlock had a chance to slam the lid down.

Really, how was he supposed to know that the lid would lock when he shut it?

So now he was trying to pry up the lid of the idiotic waffle iron with a screwdriver (admittedly not one of his better ideas, but then again, the whole waffle thing had been destined for disaster from the start) as copious amounts of black smoke poured out from the waffle iron. And to top the whole thing off, the fire alarm somehow noticed the smoke, although it hadn't detected a few minor explosions that had gone off two days ago, and was now merrily wailing away at a volume most normal smoke detectors could only dream of achieving.

Sherlock gave up on the waffle iron and instead threw the screwdriver at the smoke detector, which, if possible, made the thing even more agitated. He yelled a few choice Bembi curse words in protest, dragged a chair over to the bit of ceiling where the irritating device was mounted, and literally ripped the thing off the ceiling with his bare hands. The wailing abruptly ceased and the smoke pouring from the iron (and really, how did that waffle even still have smoke to give off?) went relatively unnoticed.

That was right when the kitchen chair took the liberty of collapsing.

A very disgruntled Sherlock hauled himself up off the floor, grabbed his trusty screwdriver, and returned to the task of opening the waffle iron.

...

John's alarm went off with an ear-splitting shriek at precisely 7:30 in very close proximity to the aforementioned man's head. It was John's turn to curse as he attempted to smack the snooze button, but failed and instead knocked the entire clock off his nightstand instead.

After taking a shower, locating his favorite jumper in the laundry basket amidst – oh, you don't want to know, and giving his alarm clock a good sound kick to shut the thing up (not necessarily in that order), John stumbled downstairs in search of some food…

…only to be greeted by the largest disaster he had seen. EVER. As in, larger than the time he and Harry decided to be 'scientists' and do chemical reactions in the sink. When they were young and innocent and did not know that putting lemon juice in the bleach was a bad idea.

The kitchen looked like a battleground. There was what used to be a chair in splinters on the floor, a still-smoking waffle iron that was melting the trash bag surrounding it, the mutilated smoke detector in the sink, and the entire place seemed to have been wallpapered in waffle batter.

John, however, was not so concerned about this as what was sitting on the kitchen table. The state of the table made him want to start jumping around like a madman, punch something, and burst into tears all at once.

Three waffles, all in varying shades of black, were piled on a semi-clean plate. The replacement for a fork was a screwdriver that looked a little worse for wear. Written above this scene in maple syrup (yes, on the kitchen table) were the words, _Happy Birthday, John_.


End file.
